Sex Toy Thief a Pervert?

Granted, it was not very nice of the unidentified man to steal a semi, crash it into an Ohio retail store and steal an $800 item, as reported by the Huffington Post. That was bad. But we wonder, would the thief have gotten the same vilification in the accompanying local news video had he robbed a Best Buy, a Target or a liquor store instead of an adult retailer?

Sure, there lots of ripe jokes to make when someone steals a pricey sex doll, a “life-like masturbator complete with female genitalia with legs and buttocks,” resembling a mannequin, according to TV reporter Harry Boomer. That’s funny on that junior high level that never gets old to people like me, and the anchors referred to his ‘sex drive,’ but that seemed like just a jokey little segue.

Mr. Boomer, however, really got into it, calling the perpetrator “a creep with a dangerous sex drive,” a “sexual deviant,” a “pervert,” suggests the act showed “how badly the highly sexed man wanted to satisfy his fantasies,” asks the public “drop a dime on this fool, call the police and report this freak.”

Jiminy Christmas! I admit, I liked “drop a dime on this fool,” because I enjoy 70’s hyperbole, but come on: “creep,” “freak” “sexual deviant” and “pervert?” Maybe it was supposed to be funny, but you really couldn’t tell that by the delivery.

First off, if sex toys were deviant I’d have been packaged like Hannibal Lecter and video monitored by a team of psychiatrists since I discovered the only thing batteries are good for back in the 90’s. Masturbation is healthy, helpful, natural, safe – 95% of men and 89% of women do it. And happily, we’re in an age where you can get all kinds of accessories to help you along.

Second, about “how badly the highly sexed man wanted to satisfy his fantasies,” …this sounds sort of heinous, but what fantasies? The psychotic urge for something shaped like an adult human female?

Third, the store was similarly vandalized in 2009. Maybe it was just a copycat or a prank – some idiot who got drunk and had (hopefully) the dumbest idea of his life that he thought was the funniest.

The bottom line is that people who are trying to address their sexual needs and look to an adult retailer to do it (legitimately – without turning the store into a drive-thru) often have terrible anxiety about it to begin with. Adults engaging in name-calling about a retail item doesn’t help anyone towards sexual health – it just lowers the tone of the general discourse on sex, which is about the last thing America needs.

So call the guy a “jackass” for doing this to a local merchant, but as for the sex toy part, we came out of the dim ages a long time ago. Let’s not let haphazard epithets coax us back in.